


London Blood

by liketogetlost



Category: Original Work, True Blood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 05:24:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketogetlost/pseuds/liketogetlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s covered in blood. She can taste it still, rimming her lips and sitting like an old friend made new again on the back of her tongue. Her ruined dress is soaked in it and she thinks, idly, the stains will never come out, not now. They’ve already set.</p>
            </blockquote>





	London Blood

**Author's Note:**

> The yet to be finished, yet to really be plotted True Blood AU co-written by me and the lovely [somethingofthewolf](http://somethingofthewolf.tumblr.com). You can find some pretty things for it [here](http://takethewords.tumblr.com/tagged/london+blood), and a fanmix here. Maybe one day there will be more fic? One can hope!

Odette is running.

It’s dark, and she’s running. It’s so dark she can’t see where she’s going. She should, because this is where she’s grown up and lived and walked countless times while bored out of her mind. But she can’t, because even the moon has forsaken her tonight.

 

She’s running, and her feet hurt, her dress is in tatters around her ankles and it’s hard to breathe. Something is behind her, laughing, dark and blood thirsty and inhuman. It seems to be playing with her, because one second it will seem to be dozens of feet behind her and the next breathing down her neck.

 

She wants to scream but she just can’t catch her breath, it seems more important to keep going forward. If she can just keep running maybe she’ll find help or the thing will leave or – 

A sob leaves her chest and she hears a whisper to her left.

“Not fast enough.”

It’s the last thing she hears before the knives slide into her neck and the black night turns even darker.

\--

She’s naked.

And dirty. Impossibly dirty. Odette opens her eyes and they hurt, the sun is blinding. But the more she blinks she realizes it’s not daytime. She looks up at the sky and the stars hurt to look at, it feels like shards of glass in her eyes.

Her skin is covered in cool earth and her tongue feels thick in her mouth. All at once she realizes she’s absolutely _starving_ , so much so her stomach is twisted up in excruciating knots. Odette moans, and her ears ring. Her own voice sounds so much sharper, higher pitched. Like an eagle screaming in the sky.

She needs help, though, so she yells for it. The pain shatters her eardrums and makes her head throb.

“ _Please_.” There are tears streaking down her cheeks and when they reach her lips they taste like blood.

She’s alone, and terrified, and so goddamn hungry she wants to die.

She hears something. It sounds so close. It smells so good.

“Odette!”

She grimaces and covers her ears while wanting to yell out in response. They keep calling her name and she can’t recognize their voice, they don’t sound like any voice she’s heard before. 

“Odette!”

They’re coming closer, now, close enough for her to smell their blood.  
She can hear their heartbeat throbbing like drums in her head.  
Her throat is so dry.  
Her stomach is heaving it’s so empty.  
“Oh my God, Odette!”

They’re so close, now. She holds up a shaking hand, eyes closed, mouth open.

“Oh child, what’s happened?”

It’s the hunger that makes her lunge.  
It’s the taste that makes her keep drinking.

\--

She’s covered in blood. 

She can taste it still, rimming her lips and sitting like an old friend made new again on the back of her tongue. Her ruined dress is soaked in it and she thinks, idly, the stains will never come out, not now. They’ve already set.

She tries to remember who taught her that. 

Feels like she should be able to remember now she’s not so disoriented, but then the calls are starting up again, loud and piercing through the dark.   
She runs before she can convince herself to stay.

\--

When she hits a building, she stops. It might be a church.  
She’s still hungry. She’s still so, so hungry and it’s nothing like she’s ever felt before, this gnawing ache. It scares her.   
What she did scares her. Who she did it to, someone she -  
A woman comes out the side of the building carrying the washing. Odette heard her coming when she was still inside. Everything is so loud now.  
“Oh! What in Heaven’s name is that all over ya, sweetheart? Come over here out from the cold, come on now.” She sets the bags down as she takes a step forward, hand held out, gentle, so as not to startle.  
She cries, after. Because this time it was even easier.  
\--

Things continue like this for a long, long time. 

And then one day, she stops. She’s huddled somewhere, the night fog thick and creeping around her bare legs, and she thinks, there must be only so far a person can fall. 

A person. Her mind catches on it, stumbles, like it’s a branch she hadn’t been able to see along the path, getting all caught up in her skirts. She thinks it again, closes her eyes to savor the sound, and clings to it. Repeats it like the prayers she no longer says.

The next night she finds a river to wash in, steals some clothes from an old farmer’s daughter’s abandoned bedroom, and sets off for the nearest city. 

She moves fast. And London meets Odette before the sun that day.  
\--  
She has too much fun, at first. 

Not reckless fun, but just plain, bloody fun. 

For a while she’s scared, yes, but once she finds the right ones, the ones like her they introduce her to a world just beneath the one she knew before. A world that exists only in moonlight.

She stays in different places, learning the city and the existence.

She tries to abstain from drinking for a while, only giving into temptation when her stomach rebels against her and feeding on animals. Eventually her new friends convince her that it’s okay; introduce her to people who want, actually want, to give her their blood.   
She finds so many people who want her to drink from them. Beautiful, interesting people. There’s so many of them in London. Her life before had been so small, so confined. All the country air felt stale in her lungs, no matter how much open space there was.  
They taste just _brilliant_. Food tastes like garbage, but people taste like gourmet delicacies she’s only read about. Sweet and earthy, and salty and thick. She gulps life down in mouthfuls and lets it run through her.   
Inevitably, she needs money. She finds a job at a pub working the night shift. There are the local drunks who try to paw at her as she passes but she’s learned to take care of herself. Almost can’t help herself, really.   
If she flashes her fangs every so often, she knows they’ll recoil and chalk it up to nothing more than alcohol fogging their minds.

The sex is amazing.

One of her new friends tells her it’s a good thing she lost her virginity before she was turned. She asks why, outside of the obvious, and what she hears would have made her blush, before. But only some.  
Now, Odette only agrees, because it’s all just so _good_.

At first she only does it with her own kind, because it feels strange to consider otherwise. She may not be a virgin but she’s still new to it, unsure. Her friends know exactly what to do, where to touch her, how to make it brilliant. She drinks from them with no worries, and they do the same to her.

Then one night a gorgeous dark haired, blue eyed thing walks into the pub and Odette can’t help herself. She’s been warned about the urge to drink during sex, the urge to go too far, but she’s sure she can resist, unless he wants it.   
Strips him of his jacket and braces in the alley as he lifts her skirts up, mumbling into her neck. Everything is so ultra sensitive, he’s so alive and filled with energy and wherever he touches her burns like the sun.

Sometimes she misses the sun.

When he slides inside she moves fast, insanely fast, and he pants hard enough that he sounds like he’s hyperventilating. 

“Oh God, Odette, oh—“  
She can smell him, just below the surface of his skin, boily and tangy. It makes her mouth water. She drains him without a thought.

When she comes back to herself she cries dark tears over her cheeks. Her friends help her with the body. They tell her not to worry.

They toss him in the river. She thinks of the shape of his jaw, the startling white of her fingers against his hair. And she buries him somewhere down deep. 

Soon, she knows, he won’t be the only one in her graveyard.

\--

There’s a flower shop she always passes on her way to the pub.  
A well kept, cramped little place that’s always closed, the hour too late for respectable businesses to keep up shop. There’s a set of rooms above it, connecting with a basement whose floor is made up of firm, packed dirt.   
She stares at the balcony every night for a week before pulling Randolph away from tending bar to ask a favor.   
The next night she’s got a meeting at a respectable inn just around the corner from the shop, and not two days later the rooms above stairs are hers and hers alone.

It’s her first time living on her own, really, walls and a landlord who doesn’t wonder why this delicate young girl is never in during the day so long as she pays rent on time and doesn’t cause a bother for the business. Surrounded by her jumble of new friends, new experiences, since she arrived which is what she needed, what she wanted. Total immersion was the only way to get through the shock. Pick herself up.   
Now, she steps out onto the balcony, closes her eyes and imagines what the shop must have looked like that morning, just as the sun was rising, streets still mostly empty. The light coming through that wide window up front, streaks shining through and just barely hitting the wood floor, as if on tip toe, trying not to wake anyone.   
Takes a breath she doesn’t need and releases it on a sigh. Happy, or almost. There’s the potential.   
It’s time for a change.


End file.
